A recently published United Nations report on poverty levels in the world points out that India is home to the largest number of poor with one-third of the world's 1.2 billion extreme poor living in the country.

According to the UN Millennium Development Goals
report 2014, the country also had the highest number of under-five
deaths in the world in 2012, with 1.4 million children dying before
reaching their fifth birthday.

The above findings should be taken as a serious matter of concern
for all concerned. Experts, both national and international, need to
keep discussing this issue at great length for coming out with best
of the solutions to reduce this figure. No doubt, this figure would
have been higher but for the good work done by all the previous
Government's so far, two-third of the total population are living
above the poverty line.

In
Focus

Different options should be discussed for tackling the above
issue. One option could be by mandating guaranteed jobs for more than
300 days in a year for all those covered by MGNREGA (Mahatma Gandhi
National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme) may help India completely
wipe out the poverty levels faced by a section of the population.
Therefore, this option should also be debated as a solution.

There cannot be a better proclamation for any Government by saying
that "poverty is now a history". Therefore, the present
Government should seize the golden opportunity and do everything to
ensure that in the coming days, "poverty becomes a history".